A typical retailer will deposit the daily receipts into a night deposit box maintained by a bank or other financial institution. The current practice involves counting daily cash, cheque and credit card receipts; recording the receipts on an approved deposit document; placing the cash, cheques and credit card receipts into a night deposit bag along with the deposit document; and, depositing the night deposit bag at the bank.
A problem with the present procedure arises from the time delay between the deposit document being filled out and the bank confirming and posting the deposit amounts in their reserves against a bank customer's account.
Until the bank reviews and checks the deposit document, the bank has no idea what amount the customer is depositing. Furthermore it may take days to confirm the amounts whether by contract staff or in-house staff. Still furthermore, the staff verifying the amounts may be faced with problems arising from the handwritten deposit documents which may require extra time to process illegible, forgotten or non-existent entries. From the standpoint of the bank, the bank cannot post the deposit amount to its reserves until the verification process is complete. Similarly the bank's customer has no access to the amount deposited until the bank finishes its processing.